Table of Contents

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Socioeconomic indicators for Functional Urban Regions in the United States, 1820-1970 (ICPSR 7509)

Principal Investigator(s):
Warner, Sam Bass Jr.;
Fleisch, Sylvia

Summary:

This study provides social, demographic, and economic data
on the United States population compiled from ICPSR holdings of
county-level census materials and enhanced with information obtained
from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the United States
Department of Commerce. County-level socioeconomic indicators were
aggregated and reported for 171 functional urban regions encompassing
the entire contiguous United States. These regions, established in the
early 1960s by BEA, comprise whole counties surrounding a central
Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area node that served as a recipient
location of work commuting or a center of newspaper circulation,
wholesale trade, or banking transactions. Total population counts,
proportions of adults, males, African-Americans, and foreign-born,
measures of population change, number of persons per household, and
per capita values of manufactured and farm products are listed for
census years between 1820-1970. For some years, data on per capita
income were obtained from BEA publications. The study also includes
derived measures computed by the principal investigators, such as
logarithmic values of population totals, Z-scores of most of the basic
indicators, and measures of decadal population growth for each region
normalized by the rate of population growth for the nation as a
whole. A description of the methods employed in computing these
variables, as well as a report of the initial analysis using these
data, is found in Sam Bass Warner, Jr. and Sylvia Fleisch, "The Past
of Today's Present: A Social History of America's Metropolises,
1960-1860," JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY 3,1 (November 1976), 3-118.

This study provides social, demographic, and economic data
on the United States population compiled from ICPSR holdings of
county-level census materials and enhanced with information obtained
from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the United States
Department of Commerce. County-level socioeconomic indicators were
aggregated and reported for 171 functional urban regions encompassing
the entire contiguous United States. These regions, established in the
early 1960s by BEA, comprise whole counties surrounding a central
Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area node that served as a recipient
location of work commuting or a center of newspaper circulation,
wholesale trade, or banking transactions. Total population counts,
proportions of adults, males, African-Americans, and foreign-born,
measures of population change, number of persons per household, and
per capita values of manufactured and farm products are listed for
census years between 1820-1970. For some years, data on per capita
income were obtained from BEA publications. The study also includes
derived measures computed by the principal investigators, such as
logarithmic values of population totals, Z-scores of most of the basic
indicators, and measures of decadal population growth for each region
normalized by the rate of population growth for the nation as a
whole. A description of the methods employed in computing these
variables, as well as a report of the initial analysis using these
data, is found in Sam Bass Warner, Jr. and Sylvia Fleisch, "The Past
of Today's Present: A Social History of America's Metropolises,
1960-1860," JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY 3,1 (November 1976), 3-118.

Access Notes

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file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated
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Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is
provided on the ICPSR Web site.

Methodology

Data Source:

United States censuses, 1820-1970

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: